Should anyone ask, I’ll help drain the wine lakes

BBC NEWS | Business | EU wine lakes set to be drained

Under the five-year plan, initiated by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, winemakers in EU countries will get cash rewards for producing less wine by abandoning some or all of their poorer quality vineyards.

Compensation of 420m euros is being offered in the first year of the scheme, hoped to begin in August next year for farmers willing to help tear up a combined 200,000 hectares of grape vines – about 6% of the 3.4 million total planted.

Jean Louis Piton, chairman of the farmers’ union Copa Cogeca, argued that the core of the EU’s reform agenda was to impose the New World model on Europe’s ancient industry. “This is a model that does not put agricultural exploitation, wine exploitation and man at the heart of its concerns, but chooses to promote the industry’s interests instead,” he said.

I wish I got paid for doing less work. How about not giving out subsidies in the first place and letting the market take care of this.